I hate rats. I had a pet rat to try and overcome it. I even gave him mouth-to mouth resuscitation when he had a heart attack. But I couldn't conquer it.
Throughout my years championing for civil rights, analyzing politics and advocating on behalf of the voiceless, I am disturbed the most when harmless children suffer because of politics or detrimental policies.
A lot of young poets today, from what I've heard and experienced, can't get their heads past George W. Bush, and I've heard so many poems about this democracy and this era of politics that I'm kind of bored by it.
I'm not a political person. When I start to get into it, it just upsets me. I feel so powerless when it comes to politics. So I've just decided to be non-political and very, very pro-soldier.
We, to some degree, are like what we are because we inherited certain things from the Greeks and the Romans. One of them that's so striking is the whole area of politics.
I deliver very traditionally, and people aren't threatened. I think if I cursed or seemed wilder, I couldn't get away with the amount of very opinionated politics I get away with.
I describe in 'Chimpanzee Politics' how the alpha male needs broad support to reach the top spot. He needs some close allies and he needs many group members to be on his side.
I've learned a lot about what kind of actor I want or do not want to be while being on set. I sit back and observe how other actors treat the totem pole of set politics.
Every week I read about myself in a magazine, about something that I haven't done or some place that I've never been or don't even know. It's just gossip, rumors, egos, and politics.
I grew up in an apolitical household. I never left the country. When I became an adult, I started traveling and became interested in politics, and I probably talked about things in a silly, ignorant way.
Seattle is a liberal city, its politics not so much blue (in the American, not the British, sense) as deep ultramarine, and its manners are studiously polite.
When governments become large, voters cannot exercise close oversight, otherwise known as political power.
I look for the humanity in people, however big the politics or oppressive the situation may be, whether it's subsumed within a human being or between two human beings. I want to help us hold a mirror to ourselves.
What's gratifying about West Wing is that everybody told us that it couldn't be done - that the man or woman on the street didn't care about politics. But if you set things up correctly, people don't have a problem with it.
In addition to the decline in competition, American politics today is characterized by a growing ideological polarization between the two major political parties.
Parenting girls makes you quite gender-conscious - it's almost impossible to fight the power of pink. It's not such a terrible thing to want to be a princess when you're five, but it would be nice if there were some other options.
Air power is indivisible. If you split it up into compartments, you merely pull it to pieces and destroy its greatest asset, its flexibility.
She had been trying hourly to ensure that this new friendship remained such, to be certain that it would not slip out of the careful grasp of her fingers and into the darker champers of her heart.
I need to have some depth in my characters. That's why they are all Bengalis. I can't imagine writing a book with someone called Saxena as the hero.
Every astronaut flew into space for a living. But while NASA has not solved the security problems, I would not put me back into a shuttle - and no other astronaut. The confidence is shaken.
We must become acquainted with our emotional household: we must see our feelings as they actually are, not as we assume they are. This breaks their hypnotic and damaging hold on us.
